A short biography of Charles de Gaulle before the Second World War

Charles André Marie Joseph de Gaulle (1890-1970), born in Lille, was
the third of the five children of Henri and Jeanne de Gaulle. Henri de
Gaulle was a highly educated, Catholic and patriot teacher. He was very
distinguished and refused to join the anti-Dreyfusard party when the
Dreyfus affair divided France into two opposed camps.
Probably advised by his father, Charles de Gaulle decided to join the
army and was graduated from the Military College of Saint-Cyr in 1908.
He was posted to the 33rd Infantry Regiment in Arras, commanded by
Colonel Philippe P&eacutetain. De Gaulle was injured three times during the
First World War: firstly on 15 August 1914 in Dinant (Belgium),
secondly in June 1915 in Champagne, and thirdly near the fort of
Douaumont in Verdun in March 1916. He was then jailed in four different
fortresses in Germany, from which he attempted five times to escape, to
no avail.

After the War, de Gaulle was hired by the Polish government as an
instructor and teacher in the Military College of Rambertow and the
Army Staff in Warsaw. Back to France, he married Yvonne Vendroux in
April 1921 and brilliantly tought history at the Military College of
Saint-Cyr.
De Gaulle studied at the War College (Ecole de Guerre), where his
original views did not please the old-fashioned and conservative
professors. Accordingly, he was given a low rank position in the
French Army Staff in Mainz (Germany). Fortunately, Marshal Pétain had
not forgotten him and appointed him in his staff as Officer Writer in
1925. De Gaulle had to write the history of the French soldiers. In
1927, Pétain ordered the Commander of the War College to invite de
Gaulle for three lectures on war philosophy. The partnership between
Pétain and de Gaulle ended because of a dispute on the authorship of
the history de Gaulle was supposed to write. Pétain offered de Gaulle
the command of the XIXth Battalion of Chasseurs in Trier (Germany), but
de Gaulle could not obtain the chair he had expected at the War
College. He left for Lebanon, where he was from 1929 to 1931 head of
the IInd and IIIrd Departments of the Staff.

Back to France, de Gaulle was posted to the General Secretariat of the
National Defense, where he was involved for the next six years in the
debates on the modernization of the French armed forces. He published
his two most famous books, Le fil de l'épée, after his lectures at
the War College, giving a self-portrait of a commander, and Vers une
armée de métier, a plea for the complete revamping of the armed forces
and the creation of units of moteurs cuirassés (the armour) made
of 100,000 professional soldiers trained to surprise and breakout war.
De Gaulle was supported by the media and some leaders of the
Parliament, for instance Paul Reynaud and Philippe Serre, and was able
to trigger a limited modernization of the armour. However, he was
violently attacked by members of the staff of the three main
Commanders of the armed forces, Weygand, Pétain and Gamelin. He was
nicknamed Colonel Motor and commanded in 1937 the unit of chars
acier (steel tank) of the 507th Regiment based in Metz, upsetting
General Giraud, the Military Governor of Metz, who was absolutely
opposed to the autonomous use of the armour. De Gaulle published his
book La France et son armée, which included several chapters from the
history he should have written for Pétain, thus increasing the dispute
with the Marshal.

Free France (France libre)

On 3 September 1939, de Gaulle was appointed Commander of the armour
units of the Vth Army in Alsace. In January 1940, he sent to 80 civil
and military leaders a memorandum entitled L'Avènement de la force
mécanique. This was a violent indictment of the clueless strategy
decided by the General Staff and a kind of prefiguration of the 18 June
1940 Appeal. On 10 May 1940, the German breakout to Sedan forced the
Staff to appoint Colonel de Gaulle Commander of the (still not
completely equipped) IVth Armoured Division. From 17 June onwards,
his Division was able to stop for a while Guderian's XIXth Armoured
Corps. On the bridge of Saar and later in Abbeville, de Gaulle proved
that he was not only a war theoretician but also a brilliant field
commander.
On 5 June 1940, de Gaulle, temporary appointed General four days
before, was appointed Vice-Secretary of Defense by President of Council
(Prime Minister) Paul Reynaud. With the Prime Minister and Georges
Mandel, de Gaulle was the only active member of the government and
attempted to save what could still be saved after the debacle of early
June. He traveled twice to London to ask for more British support and
propose the merging of the two colonial British and French Empires.
However, Pierre Laval succeded to Paul Reynaud on 16 June and falsely
claimed that the British government had allowed his allies to ask an
armistice to Germany.

On 17 June 1940, encouraged by Mandel and Reynaud, de Gaulle took Sir
Edward Spears' plane and landed in London. On 18 June around 20:00, he
gave to the BBC his famous Appel du 18 juin, calling for resistance
to the German occupier. For months, de Gaulle remained
Charles-le-Seul (Charles the Lonesome), and more and more officials
rallied Pétain's Etat Français. De Gaulle started the building of France Libre with a bunch of obscure captains and adventurous
journalists. However, Churchill acknowledged him, privately on 28 July
and solemnely on 7 August, as the leader of the free French.
De Gaulle, then also called Charles-sans-Terre (Charles Lackland) needed
some free French territory to back his leadership, and attempted to
land in Dakar (Senegal) with Churchill's help on 23 September. The
Dakar garrison shot on the Franco-British fleet and the landing was
cancelled. However, parts of the French colonial empire (the French
Equatorial Africa, Tahiti, New Caledonia and the French possessions in
India) quickly rallied Free France. De Gaulle set up his
politico-military staff, made of General Catroux, Admiral Muselier,
René Pleven, Professor René Cassin, Pierre-Olivier Lapie, Maurice
Schumann, Louis Vallon and Captain Andre Dewavrin aka Passy. De Gaulle
was sentenced to death by a military court in Clermont-Ferrand on 2
August 1940.
Before 1942, the armed forces of the Free France were too weak to be
involved in important military operations. De Gaulle prefered to
negociate with his British and American allies to protect the French
interests all over the world and to make of the Free France more than a
foreign legion. De Gaulle wanted to be considered as the legitimate
head of France.

During this "war inside the war", de Gaulle had very difficult
relations with his allies. Upon Hitler's request, Admiral Darlan, head
of the Vichy government, allowed the German Air Force to use the
airfields of Syria, then under French mandate. In May 1941, General
Catroux, helped by British forces, expelled the Vichy forces and
promised emancipation to Syria. However, Churchill complained that
Britain had not fought in Syria for substituting the Gaullists to the
Vichyists, and General Spears set the Lebanese and Syrian politicians
against de Gaulle. The conflict increased in 1942 and resumed in 1945
after the victory. De Gaulle was also in conflict with the USA, who had
attempted to land in the French islands of Saint-Pierre and Miquelon,
located near Canada, allegedly to protect North America from the German
submarines. De Gaulle answsered by sending an expedition commanded by
Admiral Muselier, upsetting President Roosevelt.

De Gaulle's relations with the resistance networks inside France were
also difficult. There were three main networks at the end of 1941:
Combat (Henri Frenay), Libération (Emmanuel d'Astier) and
Franc-Tireur (J.P. Lévy). Jean Moulin, a préfet sacked by Vichy,
visited de Gaulle in London in autumn 1941 and propose to represent de
Gaulle in France. However, de Gaulle observed the progress of the
resistance with some reluctance: the resistance movements were often
very autonomous, they had links with Britain and the IIIrd Socialist
Internationale, and some of their members wanted to reestablish the IIIrd
Republic, which de Gaulle considered as the main responsible of the
1940 debacle. The leaders of the Resistance were also often reluctant
against de Gaulle, considered as authoritarist if not monarchist. The
relations between de Gaulle and the Resistance dramatically improved
when Léon Blum, the historical Socialist leader jailed by Vichy,
solemnely recognized de Gaulle as the leader of the resistance
movements. This recognition allowed de Gaulle to be considered as
significantly representative by London, Washington and Moscow.

In 1942, de Gaulle wanted to involve the Free France in the fight
against Germany. The Americans decided that the landing in France
should be done in two waves. On 8 November, they landed in Casablanca
and Algiers without having informed de Gaulle. Darlan, then in Algiers,
led a short-lived resistance and rallied the invaders. He was murdered
six weeks later by monarchists. Darlan's death opened a competition
between the Gaullists, who helped the allied forces in Algiers, and the
partisans of General Giraud, who had escaped from a German fortress in
June 1940. Roosevelt supported the very amenable Giraud, whereas
Churchill trusted de Gaulle, with some reluctancy. In May 1943, de
Gaulle was forced to meet Giraud in Anfa near Casablanca, the two
rivals being appointed co-presidents of the Comité Français de
Libération Nationale, the only representative of the fighting France.
However, Catroux manoeuvred skillfully in Algiers, and de Gaulle became
the single leader of the CFLN. At the same time, the Conseil National
de la Résistance, presided by Jean Moulin, also acknowledged the
single leadership of de Gaulle.

In June 1944, de Gaulle was aware of the project of allied
administration of France and was able to ruin it. Five days after the
allied landing in Normandy on 6 June 1944, de Gaulle landed on the
French territory in Courseulles. The popular support he received
definitively convinced the allied leaders of his representativity. His
influence on the strategy to be set up to liberate France increased. He
was able to impose Leclerc's IInd Armoured Division (2e DB) as a peak
unit. The 2e DB was the first to enter Paris, where de Gaulle went
down the Champs-Elysées on 26 August, along with the leaders of the
Resistance still alived, acclamated by one million of Parisians.

Flag of Free France

The cross of Lorraine was adopted
as the emblem of Free France in June 1940. Vice Admiral Muselier, the first
Commander-in-Chief of the Free French Naval
Forces, is most probably the inventor of the symbol of the Free
France. The naval and airborne forces which had rallied de Gaulle
were asked to use the cross of Lorraine as their emblem. Since
Pétain's French State had kept the
Tricolore as the national flag, it was necessary to add a charge to
the Tricolor flag used by the Free France. An emblem with a strong
historical meaning was required to be opposed to the German
Hakenkreuz. Muselier recalled the cross of Lorraine he had
seen several times as a patriotic symbol during his childhood in
Lorraine. It took de Gaulle several months to officially adopt the
cross of Lorraine as the emblem of the Free France.
On 29 January 1941, de Gaulle created the Order of Liberation. The
badge of the Order is a shield bearing a sword charged with a small
cross of Lorraine. The ribbon is bicolor, black and green for
mourning and hope, respectively. The motto (Patriam servando
victoriam tulit) proclaims the fatherland service and announces
the victory.
The cross of Lorraine was officially prescribed as the emblem of the
Free France (later the Fighting France) by a regulation of 5 June
1941. At the end of the war, it was often associated with the V of
Victory.

Ivan Sache, 10 May 2003

The flag of Free France flies at the Leclerc's monument at the Porte
d'Orléans, a southern entry of Paris, where the first French
tanks came into Paris in August 1944.

Modern rendition of the flag of Free France

by Ivan Sache

The review Le Guide du Val d'Oise
2000 shows a picture of the pardon which took place in 2000 in
Conflans-Sainte-Honorine, during which the 60th anniversary of the
Appel du 18 Juin was celebrated.
The flags visible on the picture are the flags of France, Brittany, European Union, Québec and a vertical version of the flag of Free France, with a black cross of Lorraine extending over the
blue and white stripes.
The flag is probably not historical and was certainly home-made for
the ceremony.